Sep 12, 2008

Business = Indigo flys past Deccan to become No-1 no frills

Air traffic continues to lose altitude; demand has plunged 29% since MayBANGALORE: IndiGo, the Gurgaon-based carrier, flew past Deccan (now Kingfisher Airlines) to become the largest no-frills carrier in India in August.That’s a fast flight, considering it started services exactly two years ago, in 2006 August, while rivals have been flying for far longer.Despite a 0.20 percentage point fall in its spoils, IndiGo nosed ahead, ratcheting up 10.3% market share compared with Deccan’s 10.2%.“It’s going to be neck and neck fight between the two (Deccan and IndiGo),” said an industry source.Besides Deccan, Kingfisher and IndiGo, the other airline that has lost market share in August is Air India (domestic).On the other hand, Jet, JetLite, SpiceJet, Paramount, GoAir and MDLR have each usurped a higher share.Domestic air traffic continued its downward slide as the number of passengers carried by scheduled airlines fell by 5.28% in August to 29.22 lakh passengers from 30.85 lakh passengers in July.Air travel demand has crashed 29% since May this year, when the domestic airlines had carried 41.16 lakh passengers.Vijay Mallya took the biggest hit in August —- full service carrier Kingfisher and budget airline Deccan both saw a huge slump in the number of passenger carried.In all, they sold 90,000 seats less, with Deccan clocking 50,000 less seats and Kingfisher the rest compared with July.The two carriers also saw the biggest drop in the load factor of 14.50 percentage points in August.Deccan’s load factor in August was down to 39% compared with 49.2% in July.Kingfisher’s load slipped to 59% from 63.3% in July.All this has led to Mallya’s airlines losing 1.17 percentage points market share.In contrast, the airlines of Mallya’s rival Naresh Goyal — Jet Airways and JetLite — gained 1.7 percentage points market share and sold 1,000 more tickets in August. During the same month, its market share rose by 2.7 percentage points.An airline source said; “It looks like Jet Airways has eaten into Kingfisher’s market share through its aggressive promotions.”